Animal feed company, M Beattie and Son Ltd in Northern Ireland has officially opened a new state-of-the-art blending plant. Boasting an intake of 40 tonnes per hour and raw material storage capacity of ten times that amount, the fully-automated system will dramatically increase the scale of the operation.
“We will now be able to manufacture a specific blend to meet the individual
customer’s exact needs, which can then be made available in bulk, mini bulk or
in 50kg bags. The key advantage of the plant is that it offers us greater scale
and provides us with specialist storage facilities”, according to quality
control manager Willie Scott.
After the specific blend requirements have
been fed into the computer system, all the raw materials are conveyed to the
mixing plant, which can produce 25-30 tonnes per hour. Molasses is then applied
in a controlled environment before the finished product is distributed into five
15-tonne bulk storage bins. These elevated bins are supported by a steel
structure, from which lorries can be filled by gravity with the minimum of fuss.
About the company
M Beattie and Son Ltd was established in
1949 by Matthew Beattie. It is currently under the direction of son Cecil,
daughter-in-law Iona and grandson Arnold. It sells a range of farm feeds,
fertilisers, veterinary medicines, farming building materials and coal. Twenty
four people are currently employed within the business which services customers
in Tyrone, east Donegal and a large swathe of Derry.